


leave the stars to burn

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, F/M, Misuse of the Force, Psychic Bond, Space Pirates, Space Stations, Unresolved Sexual Tension, no Dark no Light only connection, no one calls it the Force but the Force is still there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Rey spends her days ripping parts out of an abandoned space station, the same dangerous routine of salvage and barter.





	leave the stars to burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boudour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boudour/gifts).



> _Were all stars to disappear or die,_   
>  _I should learn to look at an empty sky_   
>  _And feel its total dark sublime,_   
>  _Though this might take me a little time._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- W.H. Auden, "The More Loving One"
> 
> *

Scavenging the abandoned Shaba Station is always risky. The sharp, sheared-off planes of metal exposed to the vacuum of space that are waiting to slice open a suit faster than you can realize it's happening, no time to stop the oxygen from rushing out, suffocation in an instant. Bundles of wires that might still have current flowing through them, because even though the station is empty of lifeforms doesn't mean it's _dead_ , and some pressurized parts still have power even though other sections are wide-open to the stars. It's beautiful, in a way, but Rey has scavenged here enough that she knows to admire it only from the safety of her pod, before even stepping into the airlock. There's no one else here; if something were to happen, she'd have only seconds to save herself. 

It's dangerous work; there aren't many who scavenge in space. Somehow she always knows the right moment to stop, the right step to take, where to start disassembling things first. 

Her suit is the most basic model. It's utilitarian, no bells and whistles to break, repaired cheaply when she does have to repair it. She'd spent six months cutting power couplings out of fallen Star Destroyers in the war-wastes on Jakku to save up the bulk of the credits, sleeping in a sandblasted fallen AT-AT, eating as little as she could in order to save as much as possible. Everything she owns fits in a pack, except for the flight pod and her quarterstaff. The tiny ship had cost a years' work and the pawning of her bracelet, the last thing left from her parents. Another few months and she can buy back the circle of uncut crystals set in a dull silver-colored metal. She can still picture it perfectly. Rough, like her. It should finally fit. 

Rey slips into her suit and does up all the seals one by one. Then she checks them again, marking each one off against her mental list, before completely sealing the helmet. In the tiny airlock she waits ten seconds for the cycle, then waits another count of fifteen to be sure there are no problems with her suit before clipping on her tether and opening the exit hatch. Tucked in easily accessible pockets are her pliers and space-safe cutting torch, necessary for excavating parts from the deserted station, and Rey pats those pockets gently before stepping to the edge of the hatch. In front of her is an area of the station she's only explored a few times before. Above and below her are stars.

She looks at the place she wants to land. It's lit by a carefully aimed spotlight on the outside of her pod. Then she leaps.

The weightlessness of space makes getting a heavy load of parts into the pod easy enough, so she can often do several trips back and forth to the station, but that means twice as many trips into the depot. Just once she'd like to excavate something that pays for several fuel cells at once. Rey's hoping there's something here. 

She's also hoping to slip deeper into the station and find the old crew manifests on one of these trips. Maybe there will be something in one of the units that will tell her something, _anything_ about her parents or why they left her on Niima Station before this station was abandoned. No one on the surface knows anything, or if they know, they're not saying. Her fellow scavengers at the depot are all tight-lipped in general. No one speaks of Shaba - a station which, if not thriving, was at least functional twelve years ago. 

_Pirates_ , she heard once, a hiss from Plutt to one of his thugs, and then nothing more.

*

A day's work earns her enough to eat for a few meals and almost half the credits necessary for a fuel cell. If she salvages tomorrow and takes all credits instead of rations, she'll have enough to fuel the pod for another week, as long as Unkar Plutt doesn't continue to reduce what he offers for the salvaged parts. He's been getting stingier and stingier, and not only with her, but most of the traders who go to the depot. What was worth a half-portion last week is now only worth a quarter portion.

She's debating what of the rations to save in case of emergency as she walks back to the bay her pod is docked in when there's a flurry of apprehensive beeping and the sound of something metal rolling over the walkway grate. She turns right in time to see a round BB-unit fly around the corner and nearly crash into the opposite wall before righting itself. "You there," Rey calls sharply, "what's the hurry?"

Another long string of apprehensive beeps. A trader is following the little astromech, looking to take him in for parts. Rey doesn't care to disassemble functional machinery, as it's often worth more whole, but it's not surprising to hear one of her fellow traders is willing. "You can hide in here for now," Rey tells it, putting in the code that opens the hatch to the bay she rents. The droid whirls inside and she drops the hatch again.

A hooded humanoid rounds the corner, face obscured by a mask, blaster strapped across its chest. "Girl," it says. "Seen a rolling droid?"

"Heard it maybe, but no droid came down this corridor." The lie slips easily from her mouth. 

The hooded figure stares at her a moment longer, then turns on a heel and walks away, seemingly no longer in a hurry. She listens for the thud of boots turning down a different corridor, and waits until the sound has completely faded before opening the hatch again. The droid rolls towards her and looks around the corner, then beeps inquisitively. "I got rid of them," Rey tells it. "You're safe to leave, but for now you should go that way to avoid any more traders looking to deactivate you." 

She points in the opposite direction. The droid lets out another long string of beeps. "Someone _else_ is after you?" she asks. Another long flurry. "Pirates? That's just a rumor. There haven't been any around these parts for a long time."

More beeping. "Beebee-Ate? Okay. I'm Rey. No, just Rey. Where are you trying to go?" She steps into the small bay, closing the hatch behind her. BB-8 rolls along after her as she walks the few steps to her pod, beeping his response. She slings her bag into the pod. "Classified, really? I'm afraid I don't know too many places to hide in this part of the station. Plutt checks everything in the trading depot constantly, in case someone tries to stash something that he might want for himself." 

She looks sideways at the droid. "You might qualify for that, so I'd stay out of his way."

BB-8's reply is again apprehensive. "You can't come with me," she tells him firmly, but his next reply is even more apprehensive. "I know what I just told you. I'm not your friend."

The droid's beeps sound desperate this time, and his dome droops sadly. Rey sighs. "If you're so classified, where am I supposed to drop you off?"

BB-8's hesitation is clear. "Well?" she prods, ready to slap the button that will open the hatch. "Tell me, or you have you go."

The droid trills quietly. "All right. But I can't go very far out of my way, you understand. And you'll have to stay in the pod while I'm at Shaba Station. Yes, it's abandoned. What am _I_ looking for there? That's classified just like you, droid. Are you going to ask questions the whole way?"

BB-8 beeps a negative and rolls into Rey's pod. She sighs again, wondering what she's gotten herself into, and follows.

*

Later, Rey thinks that she shouldn't have been as surprised by the vision, or that she shouldn't have been so caught off guard. She's long used to being able to catch vague thoughts and feelings from those around her, and used to something telling her when and when not to scavenge. A few times, she thinks her lies have been too easily accepted.

It comes when she's told BB-8 to be quiet for the night, and she's about to lie down and get some rest, having dimmed the pod's interior lights. She turns and sees a man, as clear as though he's standing in front of her, but he's on some other ship. There's no one else in her pod besides the droid soundless in the corner.

"You must be Rey," he says.

She doesn't move, unsure of what _he_ could be seeing. "I might be."

The man seems to mirror her stillness, and something in her translates that into relief. He has a lean face with a strong jaw, and there's a scar that runs over his cheek. "I'm Ben."

"What is this?" she asks, suddenly aware of her sleeping clothes and the thin, clearly worn blanket she pulls around herself.

"I'm not entirely certain myself. Some sort of connection."

This isn't a dream, or some holo. Rey knows what _real_ feels like, and this is it. She takes in the man's dark clothing, the dimness of the ship he's on, the visible cargo containers. It hits her suddenly who this man is, why his ship looks like this. "You're a pirate!"

"Only until I get free of them."

He looks healthy but pale, and not like he's being held against his will, but Rey knows all about doing what you must to survive. She sits down on her pallet, hugging her knees, and Ben sits down on one of the cargo containers. She asks, "And you don't know what this is, what's happening?"

Ben shakes his head. "I don't. But it must be for a reason."

Rey looks again at what she can see of the ship this man is on. Any sort of news having to do with the pirates that came out of the Uncharted Regions to loot Senate transports and assimilate their ships tends to reach the depot weeks later, and she's often too busy to stop and listen to any of the news holos, and so catches pieces only in passing. She's never been anywhere other than the parts of this sector her pod will reach without hyperdrive; the pod has one, but the fuel cells required are prohibitively expensive even when Unkar Plutt has one for sale. 

What the pirates do, and what their motivations are, she's never cared. Out here, everyone fends for themselves. 

There's a jolt and Rey looks behind her, expecting an alarm any second. There's nothing visible between her pod hatch and the hatch that divides the docking bay from the depot. No alarm sounds, no lights flash. 

She turns back around, but there's only her pack leaning against the curved wall, and the astromech droid. BB-8 beeps quizzically again. "I don't know, either," Rey admits. "That was very strange."

She's slightly unsettled, but part of her feels like she should be _more_ unsettled. Pirates, really? And why _her_ , why this dark-haired man? Rey doesn't doubt that what she'd seen was real, and that whatever that bridge between them was had been a true thing, but she's just a simple scavenger. One inconsequential human in a galaxy full of much bigger things.

She lies down again, closing her eyes, replaying the conversation. _You're a pirate!_

_Only until I get free of them._

_It must be for a reason._

The words repeat until eventually, her exhausted body overwhelms her racing mind.

*

"I know what I said yesterday, but I think it's best if you stay here," Rey tells BB-8 as she checks her gear to leave. "What if something happens to me? You'd be left floating in space."

The droid replies with a long string of confused beeps. "I suppose you do have a point there," Rey allows. "I would have to lock you in the bay's storage compartment, and it's very small."

Another string of beeps, anxious this time. Rey narrows her eyes at the droid. "You stay in the pod and stay quiet," she warns. BB-8 trills an affirmative.

"I suppose you could fly to get help if something did happen," she tells BB-8 on the way. "This pod is quite simple."

BB-8 informs her indignantly that he's an astromech droid who can pilot a number of craft on his own, and Rey has to chuckle at that. "I don't doubt it. You know, I never asked how you ended up at Niima Station in the first place."

She settles as comfortably as possible in the small pilot's chair as BB-8 launches into an explanation of how he'd accompanied his master, Commander Dameron, on a mission to obtain a map from someone BB-8 had never met. They'd met at the station, on the opposite side from Plutt's depot. BB-8's master had been spotted by someone he'd once betrayed on another mission, and fled the station posing as a refugee, promising to send a craft back to pick up BB-8.

"Who was it he double-crossed?" Rey asks, intrigued, but BB-8 doesn't know, that mission was before he'd met his master. 

She slows the pod as they approach Shaba. "Let's hope today I find what I'm looking for."

BB-8 beeps encouragingly in reply. "Thanks," Rey says, reaching out to take her suit from the shelf, then stepping into it. BB-8 rolls toward the port as though he's looking out at the station as she does up the seals. He beeps a question.

"I've done this plenty of times by myself," Rey replies, but she thinks it's sweet that someone else is concerned, even only a droid. 

She triple-checks the suit, makes sure her tools are all secure in their pockets, then clips on the tether cable and seals the helmet completely. "You stay here and keep an eye on things, all right?" she calls.

BB-8's beeps are doubting. "I don't have any way for you to come along," Rey says, smiling to herself under the helmet as she settles an empty collection bag around her shoulders. "But I won't be gone too long."

She steps into the airlock and waits two cycles like she always does. They stopped outside a section she's gone in through before, so when the outer hatch opens, she pushes off. 

The short leap across open space seems to last forever, but her aim is perfect, and Rey grabs the outside ladder she'd been aiming for without any trouble. She swings herself into the station through a blown-out wall, landing in what she thinks was a canteen area of some sort. Some tables are still bolted to the floor. She checks her tether to be sure it's not caught on anything before unhooking herself and clipping the cable to the door handle, easy to find again when it's time to go back to the pod. Then she floats through the door. 

A long corridor stretches in either direction, with a metal grate walkway. The pipes running overhead have large open sections from her previous stripping of wire - she'd gotten a decent amount, and it was lightweight enough that it made for easy transport. To the left are empty cold-storage rooms, probably for perishables sold in the canteen, and to the right all the rooms are empty, with no indication of what they had previously held. Rey has scavenged most of these areas already and taken nearly everything that could be pried out by gloved hands and carried by one person. 

Past the cold-storage rooms is a hatch in the ceiling, which she opens and floats through. This level was crew quarters, and she was surprised at the state of disarray the first time she'd gone up. It wasn't the sort of mess left by other scavengers - this part of the station hadn't been touched when she'd started coming here - but looked more like the crew had left in a hurry. Personal items floated around the rooms. Clothing was still folded in footlockers. Rey took a few pieces to replace things of her own that were threadbare and worn, but for weeks, she felt strange about wearing them. She collected all computer parts and dead datapads she could find in the living spaces, and Unkar Plutt paid surprisingly well for them, enough to fuel the pod for a month. 

There's another hatch in the corridor ceiling three rooms down, and she opens that one as well and goes up. This level is one scavengers before her have mostly stripped - based on wall mounts, Rey figures there were probably some weapons left here. She boosts herself through what must have once been a transport tube, into a command area. She's taken out most of the computer parts she can haul, and some of the navigational electronics.

In a dark alcove is a terminal that still has an active current, and Rey has spent a few minutes on each of her last few trips into the station trying to coax information out of it. The last time she pulled up some duty rosters that had identification images attached, but the few faces she'd been able to look at before needing to leave had been completely unfamiliar. The truth is, she's not entirely sure she'll recognize anyone she knew as a child, but part of her can't help hoping. 

A few keystrokes later - much quicker than last time - she's pulled up the personnel files. _Command. Transport. Supply._ She already knows that the majority of command staff had been transferred to other quadrants, so today she opens the supply roster. Foreign faces fill the small screen that's fuzzy around the edges. Rey looks at each one carefully, opening the file for anyone who looks like they might share any of her features so that she can scrutinize the larger picture that accompanies the service record.

Logically, she knows that looking at pictures doesn't count for much, but there's a part of her that's hoping she'll see a face and just _know_ ; that seeing her mother or father will fill the gap that's existed in Rey since she was old enough to understand that they'd left her with Plutt, collecting scraps other travelers had discarded to trade for food until she could start scavenging on her own. But none of the faces jar her memory at all, and after a dozen or so, she needs to start stripping more of the navigation console so she has something to trade for the day.

"Rey," a voice says, and Rey turns as quickly as her spacesuit will allow.

"Ben."

He's on what looks to her like the same ship as before - still dim, visible cargo containers, but now over his shoulder she can see a long, rectangular viewport. Outside are stars, and what looks to her like a cratered moon, but the slice she can see is not enough to identify a place. 

"I have information," Ben says. "About the pirate fleet. There's going to be a raid on a weapons depot on Houche. The day after tomorrow. That droid you had with you the other day, he belongs to the Senate? You can send him back with this information?"

The Terrabe sector is closest the pirates have come to her in years. Rey reels slightly in surprise at Ben's knowledge of BB-8. "He told me his master works for the Senate," she replies, keeping her words measured. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't." There's a pause, and Ben doesn't look away from her. The command area she's in is still completely enclosed, an area of the station that's not entirely dead, and still cycling air thanks to a reactor somewhere in the guts of the station that no one has breached yet to scavenge. Rey decides to blame the hum in her bones on that. 

Ben takes a step forward in the ship he's on and adds, "I feel it, too. Something's connecting us, at this moment, across light years of space."

"Are you really that far away?" Rey murmurs, not even thinking about what she's asking. 

"Yes. My ship is orbiting Kinooine." 

"I've never been outside this sector."

His smile is soft. "I know." 

"But how?" she demands, floating closer even though she _knows_ they're not in the same place. "How do you know all this? Why do I feel like I know _you_?"

"I can't answer that yet." Ben shakes his head. Then he pulls his dark cloak closer around his body. "The droid, will you send him? If the information reaches the Senate in time, a full quarter of the pirate fleet can be obliterated."

"I don't have the credits to buy a fuel cell large enough to power the hyperdrive on the pod. Especially not one that will get to Coruscant and back."

He waves a dismissive hand. "I'll take care of that."

Rey nods. "If you can help me fuel the pod, BB-8 can program it to return to me on auto-pilot."

"Meet me at Pointmoon Station. There's something there that we need to obtain. By the time you arrive, I'll have gotten enough credits to you that you can buy whatever fuel cell you need to send BB-8, and I should get there not far behind you. You know it?"

"I've been there," Rey replies. "What's there that you -"

Something on Ben's ship causes him to whirl around, his cloak flaring, and the question stops in her throat as their connection suddenly ends. She blinks against the sudden change in her field of vision: the fuzzy screen, still displaying a list of transport staff. 

_Well,_ Rey thinks to herself. _I guess I'm going to Pointmoon._

*

BB-8 trills happily when Rey tells him she's sending him to Coruscant. "You'll be fine by yourself?" she asks. "I suppose droids don't experience the passage of time in the same way. And I'm happy I could help you get back to your master. Oh, you'll tell him I was nice to you? That's very sweet."

She reaches out to pat BB-8's dome lightly as they approach Pointmoon. It looks as run-down as it did the last time she was here. "Return my pod in one piece, all right? It's all I have in the galaxy, and I won't be able to scavenge without it."

BB-8 assures her he'll return it as quickly as possible. She docks the pod at an available traveler's bay, then turns to the droid. "You stay here while I get the fuel cell. I should be back in a few minutes."

She slings on her bag and grabs her staff, then climbs out of the pod into the small go-between and closes the pod hatch behind her. Then she opens the forward hatch into the station. It seems fairly quiet, operating nominally on the same schedule as nearby Mindabaal, although she can hear the hustle and bustle of the always-open bazaar two levels below. Rey traded here a few times, but found Unkar Plutt to be at least slightly more consistent in his offerings than the utter slime who bought salvaged parts in this station's bazaar. Not to mention the trader who'd sent some goon after her the last time, trying to steal back the fuel cell she'd bought. The reptilian had ended up with several broken bones courtesy of her staff. 

Not far from the docking bays is a fuel depot. _I hope Ben did what he promised,_ Rey thinks, and waves her wrist over the sensor, the cuff with her credit chip embedded in it skimming the lens. The merchant waves several arms in delight at the number that comes up. "You need what, lady," it says.

"Hyperdrive. For E-class."

"Have several. Hold please." 

Rey keeps a wary eye on the other travellers who wander past, and a tight grip on her staff. The short merchant returns with the fuel cell. Rey passes her cuff over the sensor again to pay, then arranges the cell carefully in her sling bag to carry back to the pod. 

"Pleasure doing business, lady!" the merchant calls after her as she leaves, making her grimace. _Thanks for announcing I have credits,_ she thinks. She takes a slightly longer way back to the bays, one with more turns to hopefully confuse anyone who might be following her. But there don't seem to be any unfriendly shapes lurking in the shadows, and she's not getting the buzzy "someone's over my shoulder" feeling that she tends to get when there _is_ someone following her, looking to steal.

Back in the pod, Rey slides the fuel cell into the appropriate slot and waits to be sure the pod accepts it. When all the lights are green, she turns to BB-8.

"When you send the pod back, sent it to Niima Station. The coordinates are already saved. And I programmed in where you said you need to go," she tells the droid. "Give your master the location of the pirates, all right?"

BB-8's reply is slightly apprehensive. "That's nice of you to worry about me," Rey replies. She's touched. It's been a long time since someone asked her if she would be okay. "But I'll be fine. I've been here before."

BB-8 beeps a fond goodbye. 

"You, too." Rey closes up the pod and makes sure the seal is good before re-entering the station. Through the small porthole, she watches the pod release, then pick up speed as BB-8 flies away. 

Careful to avoid as many others as possible, she follows the outer walkway to a lift, and goes up to the habitat level. Waiting for her outside the lift is a dark-haired man. Ben looks exactly the same as in her visions, dressed all in black. When Rey meets his eyes, she feels a shiver of something she can only describe as _power_.

Ben smiles, a small quirk of his mouth. "You feel it, too."

"Yes," she whispers. "That's -"

"Yes."

Rey allows herself a moment to breathe through the feeling. Then she says, "What are we doing here, on this station?"

"There's something we need to retrieve from a unit on the habitat level." 

"What?"

"A lightsaber."

 _A lightsaber._ She's only heard of them in stories, murmured long ago when she was a child and lived on the outskirts of the depot with the handful of other scavengers who were either too young or too old to be alone. Now she sees there's one hanging from Ben's belt, mostly obscured by his cloak. "Do you know where?"

"I do. But first -" He holds out a glittering circle and Rey feels her eyes go wide. "I believe this is yours?"

"My bracelet," she murmurs. Ben clasps it gently around her wrist and Rey feels that same shiver again, somehow stronger this time. "But how?"

"I saw it. In a dream." He tugs her sleeve down to cover the gleaming crystals, both of them aware that Pointmoon isn't a place to wear anything you're worried other station-goers might covet. Before she had to pawn the bracelet, Rey had wound a length of wire through it, and kept it around her neck, tucked under two layers of clothes. 

"It was my mother's. It's the only thing my parents left me. I hid it, so Plutt wouldn't demand it in exchange for housing me." Momentarily lost in the memory, Rey puts her hand around where the bracelet is, and finds Ben's hand lingering. The flutter of power throbs in her again. _What is this._

Ben's gaze is dark. _Rey._

"We can't stand here," she hurries to say; anything to break the strange feeling that's enveloping her like a haze. "You know where we're going?"

"Follow me." His deep cloak barely billows as he turns. It looks heavy and warm. She glances down at her own thin and utilitarian garments. Most are left from her time on Jakku, and layered now to trap heat, but she knows both the under-tunic and leggings are reaching the end of their effectiveness. She'll need to get a darker color; this tan material had served her well in the sun, but now Rey is almost always slightly chilled doing most of her living and working again in space.

Ben pauses and she draws up close to him. "What is it you need another lightsaber for?" she murmurs, eyeing the one on his belt. "For a long time I thought they were only a myth."

"What changed your mind?"

"You," Rey says honestly. The hilt of the lightsaber looks battered in places and polished in others. She wonders if he'd assembled it himself. 

The _I did_ floats through whatever connection this is as they go up another level into a habitat area, rooms rented out short-term to travelers not staying in this sector for more than a few weeks. 

_Have you killed anyone with it?_

"Yes," Ben says out loud. He stops outside one of the recessed doors with a code panel in the adjoining wall. From a pocket he produces a small multi-tool, which he uses first to undo the tiny screws holding the outer portion of the panel in place. 

Rey holds out her hand for them without thinking. The metal is slightly warm. She tucks them into her own pocket for safekeeping as Ben swings the panel down to reveal the control mechanism inside. Then he stiffens. "Guards are coming," he says, stopping his work on the door and looking to the left of where they are, where another walkway intersects. "Tell them there's nothing to see here."

"What?"

"Tell them there's nothing to see."

"How about you get down and try to hide," she hisses at Ben, pushing at him unthinkingly, and he folds into the small alcove, hidden by the darkness of his own robes. Rey turns as two of the station's helmeted guards round the corner. "You, girl," one says.

"There's nothing to see here," she says coolly. The guard rears back slightly. "There's nothing to see here," she repeats, as tonelessly as she can manage, figuring that whatever this is, it will work best to sound disinterested.

The guard looks at their partner. "There's nothing to see here," they say.

She keeps a hand behind her, fingers curled in a handful of Ben's cloak, until the guards are gone. Then she turns toward him again, but he doesn't move, still on his knees. "See?" he murmurs, before his gaze flicks upward to meet hers. His eyes are dark. Rey doesn't know what to make of the distinctly not unhappy expression on his face, nor of the heat gathering in the space beneath her lungs. He asks, "Does it feel good, making me do this?"

"Do what? You can get up."

"I'll stay." His gloved hand settles lightly on her ankle, and she realizes with a start that she's still holding onto his cloak. 

"Ben, you -"

"It feels good, doesn't it?"

It does feel good, but in a way she's not sure how to deal with. Rey looks down at him for a long moment, taking in the tousled hair, his submissive posture, the robes pooled around him. No one has ever looked at her like this before. It makes her shiver. "Rey," he murmurs. "I wouldn't do this for anyone but you."

"You need to finish getting us into this unit," she says hurriedly. She lets go of his cloak. "Ben, get up, please. Anyone could come by."

That seems to work, because he picks up the tool on the grate next to him and rises easily. A few more seconds, and the door to the unit is sliding open, and they duck inside. "There," Ben says almost instantly, pointing at an ornate box. It's engraved with a design Rey can't place, but it seems familiar. 

"Open it," Ben says. "It's yours."

She takes the box carefully from the shelf, and Ben hands her the tool. The lock pops easily. Inside is the metal hilt of the lightsaber, a thing she's never actually seen until today.

"It's yours," Ben repeats, urgency clear in his voice. "Take it."

There's noise outside, footsteps getting louder, clearly coming in this direction. "We have to go," she tells him, and takes the lightsaber from the box. The weight feels nice in her hand. She tucks it into her belt. Then she puts the box back on the shelf and they slip out of the unit, Ben getting the door shut behind them again, quickly replacing the panel he'd taken apart. "Hurry," she whispers, not looking back at him as she walks quickly down the corridor and makes two lefts, getting out of the area. The footsteps don't get any louder but she knows it's only a matter of time before someone raises an alarm.

Ben's only a few seconds behind her. "We should get off the station," Rey says, resting a hand on the lightsaber. It feels like something she needs to do, keeping her hand on it like this. 

"We can take my ship." As he says it, a distant siren begins to sound. Ben nods at the stolen lightsaber as they start to move faster. "Do you think you can use it?"

She takes it from her belt. The smooth metal is warm against her palm. "I'm good with a quarterstaff, this can't be entirely different."

The alarm gets louder but no one they pass seems to pay them any attention, gazes sliding past as though Rey and Ben are invisible. _Are you doing this?_

Ben looks at her and Rey feels the connection between them hum stronger for a second. _You are._

"I'm just a scavenger," she mutters, ducking into a maintenance area, one with a ladder they can climb back down to where all the visiting ships dock. She has to put the lightsaber away long enough to navigate the ladder, but the alarm seems to be dimming. Clearly the all-station alert has yet to be raised. The alarm might not even have been for them. There are minimal security personnel, and most patrol the bazaar, several levels from the rental habitats. The footsteps could have been a civilian. 

Ben drops onto the deck next to her. "This way." 

He's docked in a B-class bay that's not central to the lifts due to the size of the ship. She keeps watch while he keys in a long code to access the area. No one comes past before they step into the hangar, and then the ship's hatch is rising automatically, as though it recognizes Ben. 

Rey stands on the inner side of the hangar door for a moment, taking in her surroundings. This pirate ship doesn't look much different than one of the sentinel ships she'd scavenged on Jakku, a two-seater with a long open cargo area behind. Ben walks through the cargo bay and slides into the pilot's seat. "They let you take a ship?" Rey manages to ask, because she's confused.

"You thought I was a prisoner?" He looks up at her, then gestures towards the co-pilot's chair. "I'm no prisoner."

"But you said… only until you got free of them." She leaves her pack and her staff in the hold, but keeps the lightsaber in her belt, then sits down. The seat is much more comfortable than her pod. She looks over the controls. _I could fly this,_ she thinks to herself.

"If you'd like," Ben says. Rey blinks at him. "My apologies," he murmurs. "That thought wasn't meant for me."

Confusion washes over her again now that they're alone. As Ben flies the sentinel ship away from the station, Rey closes her eyes, thinks about reaching out with her feelings, pictures it as expanding the psychic space she takes up, growing past her physical form. She can feel the kyber of her bracelet, humming on the same wavelength as the kyber in the lightsaber at her hip, in the lightsaber Ben carries. The more she calms her breathing, the stronger the awareness grows: an energy in her, the same as the energy between all the beings on the station behind them, the same as the energy in the stars. It crowds her senses, so intense Rey feels like she's also vibrating on that same wavelength.

Then she reaches out for Ben, who must feel it, because there's a pulse that seems to echo in her skull. He's resolute but not calm - there's something simmering, something dark. It curls around her. _What are you planning to do._

 _Gain what's mine._

The darkness in him shifts, seems to shimmer. Rey lets herself drift on it for a moment, fascinated, then pulls back somewhat as she feels the ship begin to slow. They're at Niima Station. "I rent the fourth bay from the right."

Ben docks the sentinel. His hands move quickly over the controls and then he turns toward her. His gaze is dark. "Are you afraid?"

Rey feels more alive than she has in years. She shakes her head. She's not _scared_ of whatever this is, but - "I don't feel in control."

His eyes flash and he nods towards the lightsaber. "You should try it. There's room in the hold."

Rey slips from the seat, freeing the weapon from her belt. It's heavier than what she's used to wielding but the principles can't be entirely different. A touch ignites the blue blade, which makes an odd, reverberating sound as she slices through the air, adjusting to the feel of the lightsaber in her hand. The quicker her thrusts and parries become, the more she feels the energy around her and the stronger the hum of the lightsaber becomes, until it all seems to meld into one. 

"Fascinating," she hears Ben say. The sound of his voice breaks her trance enough that she loses control of the arc, and the tip of the lightsaber scores the corner of the bench. The gouge glows bright red with heat, and there's a whiff of burning in the air. 

"Sorry." 

Ben makes a dismissive gesture. Rey deactivates the lightsaber but turns it in her hand for a moment before tucking it back in her belt. "What's wrong with yours?" she asks, tipping her head in the direction of Ben's lightsaber. "It felt different than this one."

"Each of them is different." He stands up and takes the weapon from his belt. "The crystal in mine is fractured -" ah, that was the frission she'd felt - "so the blade is also split."

He ignites it and Rey understands: the crimson blade is not a single smooth laser, but three, one main spitting blade and two smaller on each side like a quillion. "You constructed it that way."

"To control the kyber." Ben deactivates the lightsaber and looks at her curiously. Again, she feels the swirling confusion in him. He says her name, quietly in the limited space of the ship, and confusion rears inside of her as well. Ben takes a step closer to her. _I feel like I know you._

_What do you know?_

He looks at her for another long moment before he speaks. "I know that at night, in the chill of your pod and desperate to sleep, you imagine an ocean. You've never known anything but space and that Jakku wasteland, but it's an ocean just the same. I see an island. Green things growing. Mountains. Things I know you've never seen for real."

Rey nods, transfixed. 

"You keep scavenging that deserted old station because you think something there will tell you about your parents. Why they left you with that loathsome trader."

"Yes," she whispers. 

Ben seems to be staring straight into her as he takes another step closer. "You know in your heart they're dead in some unmarked grave."

She does know. Something in her has always known they're never coming back. That she's alone in the galaxy.

"You're not alone," Ben says, close enough now that Rey could reach out and curl her hand in the material of his cloak as she'd done on the station. "You think you're nothing, out here day to day, hoping to scavenge enough to live, but you're not. Not to me."

Suddenly enraged that he's looked so close, Rey pushes him without thinking, her palms connecting with his shoulders. But he's anticipated her, and she shivers as his gloved hands come up to catch her waist at the same moment he steps back, dissipating the force with which she tried to shove. "You're alone too, out here," she spits, _knowing_ it suddenly. "This isn't where you're from, you -" she breaks off, searching his mind, seeing his parents in Coruscant City, Ben as a child, trying to follow his mother into diplomatic meetings, learning to fly from his father. 

"I left my home," he says. 

"But why? You were loved."

A savage anger flashes through him, palpably hot. "You weren't the only one sent away."

She sees that as well: an uncle not cut out to be a teacher, distracted by his own study. Confusion. Sadness. Anger. Ben left mostly to his own devices until he'd stolen a small ship and set out looking for a life entirely different from his old one. "You found the pirates," she says.

"The leader of the fleet found me."

Rey can see the leader clear in Ben's mind, can feel Ben's fear of him mixed with a longing for approval _and_ a fierce desire to cut down the old, crippled humanoid and take his place. The swirl of emotions is so strong she feels nearly dizzy with it. She grips Ben tighter before she's entirely aware of doing so and his hands tighten in return. 

"I've never - everything you feel is so _intense_ \- my life here is small," she says, suddenly desperate for Ben to understand. It feels like the last few days have been bigger than her entire life. "I've been alone, and now there's _this_ -"

Whatever words would have followed are blanked from her mind by the fingertips pressing lightly to her jaw, then Ben's mouth covering hers. Everything seems to tilt - she registers the warmth of his lips, the dampness of his breath, followed by the recognition of just how _close_ his body is to hers.

Rey's never wanted to feel anyone else close to her in exactly this way, never wanted to kiss someone or feel the accidental touch of their tongue as they licked their lips while still so near that every breath is shared. Ben makes a surprised sound, and Rey kisses him first this time. Her head is swimming like the time she'd spent credits on cheap Fozbeer, desperate to cool down after a day on the Jakku war-wastes, and wound up mildly intoxicated and unable to sleep.

Then there's a flash of something rough, hard, _wrong_ in Ben's mind, strong enough that she feels it too, and Ben pulls away with a jerk. He stares at her for a moment, as though he's searching her face for something. Then she feels his mind retreat completely from hers as he says, "I need to leave."

"What was that?"

"Snoke. You'll be fine here without a ship?"

The leader of the pirates: barely ever seen, but rumored to be a towering figure, unafraid to either crush or consume what stands in his way. Rey's heard of him, whispered under the breath like the other scavengers are afraid saying his name will summon him. The impressions she's gotten from Ben's mind don't seem to conflict with that perception.

"I'll be fine. BB-8 should send my pod back within a few days," she answers. They're still holding on to each other, but lighter than before. She's the one who needs to disembark, but Ben's grip tightens briefly and Rey tilts her face up to kiss him. He responds immediately and she feels that gasp of hunger again. 

Then she makes herself let go and steps back. "You should leave."

She can still feel the echo of his hands on her as the hatch lowers, but she doesn't look behind her as she grabs her things and exits the ship into the bay. _I'll come back for you,_ Ben says in her mind, as she locks her pack in the storage cube. 

Rey leaves the lightsaber tucked in her belt, but covers it as best she can with a looser piece of fabric. Then she takes her staff and an empty sling bag, and goes through the door into the station. It looks exactly the same, which she's startled by, before her brain catches up and she remembers she's the one who's changed. No one in the corridor pays her any attention. She feels the flicker of Ben departing, more in her mind than through the floors, used to the vibrations of ships coming and going. 

On station time, it's late, and she doesn't pass too many others roaming. She feels like everything that's happened is bottled up inside of her, but yet it's more than her body can contain; she'll never sleep like this, no matter the hour. Which means it's a good time to make use of the refresher. Almost all the doors to the sonics are broken, but she knows the trick to jamming it closed with her staff. These garments are too thin to keep wearing every day, but they're not completely threadbare yet, so she's keeping them, and shouldn't pack them away dirty. 

While the sonic hums, she lets the last few hours replay themselves in her mind. The excitement of stealing the lightsaber - she hadn't even stopped to worry about who it might belong to, or who might come looking for it. And everything with Ben was like rappelling down the sheer drop inside a Star Destroyer in the wasteland, or the leap between her pod and the abandoned station. That same weightless rush, but entirely in her mind. 

Except when they'd kissed. That rush she'd felt with every fiber of her being, as every inch of her body cried out to be even closer. She's used to relying on herself for everything. Even her own pleasure, in those rare times when she's not so exhausted from hauling scrap that all she can do is sleep. The surge of wanting it from someone else was completely unfamiliar. Is _still_ completely unfamiliar, because it hasn't stopped humming through her.

The sonic turns off automatically with a clunk, and Rey startles. _Take this time to sort it out,_ she tells herself sternly, and knocks open the sonic's door. In the grimy mirror above the sinks - there's no water again, which isn't a surprise - she re-braids her hair. The methodical movements are calming, and by the time she exits the 'fresher, Rey feels more solidly herself.

She goes up to the bazaar. A few stalls are open, including the one where she found her last set of clothes. Basic and utilitarian, and easily hemmed and darted to fit. She doesn't need anything that could get caught in a hatch. She chooses a heavier fabric this time, and darker, more suited to life in this chill station. The merchant hovers as she browses, wary of thieves. 

"You need tailoring?" it asks as Rey pays for the items. "Only small fee."

She can do that herself after years of practice in making things last as long as possible. "No, thank you." 

Back in the rental bay, she tries on the new garments, then loses herself in the careful alterations. Focusing on the needle and thread pulling through the fabric in tiny steps helps her to get her spinning thoughts under control. When she's tied off the last knot, she smooths the leggings and tunic carefully, then folds them next to her pallet to wear tomorrow.

She takes out her pack, digging the small self-heating cookpan from the bottom where it keeps everything else stable. The protein section of a rations packet gets dumped in to fry as she mixes the powder from the other section in a cup with a little water from her canteen. The brown mixture solidifies into something close to bread, which she uses to eat the fry-up. It's mostly tasteless, but she got used to that a long time ago. 

She rearranges her pallet on the metal grate of the floor once she's finished eating. Niima Station without her pod is strange, but there's enough room in the empty bay to stretch out and sleep. She can't remember the last time she took more than a single day's rest, between long periods of no rest at all. If she's not salvaging, she's cleaning and preparing what she stripped for sale, or doing repairs on the pod. 

She uses the thought of the pod to calm her mind further now, picturing it whole, then taking it apart. Carefully, piece by piece, imagining each component laid down in a neat row as it's removed. By halfway through the third line, she's fallen asleep.

*

Rey needs to buy fuel while she can afford to, and there's only one place in this junk-heap of a station that sells it.

"Ah, Rey." Plutt leers at her across the divider.

She doesn't shudder in disgust, but it's always a near thing. She waves her wrist over the chip reader and sees the surprise on his fleshy face. "I need three fuel cells, a dozen portions, and I'll pay my docking fees for the next two months."

"You must have sold something big, eh, girl?" Plutt asks, slapping one hand on the counter and looking as though he's about to start salivating at her credit total. "You find a good droid, sell it for parts? Where else would you get so many credits?"

"None of your business, that's where," she snaps, glaring back at him.

Plutt narrows his eyes - as much as he can - but slides the ration packets over the counter. He won't deny her now that she has real credits to pay with, instead of only salvage to barter. "Lucky I have three. Keeping stock is foolish with all these thieves and pirates."

He says it in such a way that Rey knows he considers her part of that grouping. She shrugs, then says, "Lucky, I guess."

Plutt leers at her a second longer. "Bring the fuel," he barks at his droid assistant. 

Rey puts the rations in her bag and moves to the side of the trading stand to wait, out of Plutt's line of sight, wondering if she'd really sent BB-8 to some terrible fate. She hopes not. The droid had known for sure where he was going. For a moment, Rey wishes she were that certain of her own life. 

There's a sputtering, static sound as someone's transceiver is switched on nearby. "...marauding raiders," she hears, "with their… Kylo Ren…" 

The signal is poor, dropping every few words. "...raid leader… weapons and other cargo… unknown direction..." 

Plutt's droid whistles at her, and she takes the fuel cells. Two she adds to her bag. The third she carries in the hand not holding the quarterstaff. If someone comes after her looking to steal, she can hit them with the thick bottom of the cell before tripping them with the staff. 

"...other news ...ships of another raiding fleet ...cut off and destroyed," she hears from the transceiver as the volume is suddenly turned up. Then it sputters again and there's a clang, as though the owner has slapped it in an attempt to acquire a better signal. "... _PIRATE DEATH TOLL_..." 

There's a flurry of noise that sounds to her like another party's taken offense to the volume, followed by a loud squeal of feedback. Rey figures it's a good distraction, and slips out of Plutt's area as quickly as she can. 

The occupied indicator light is on outside her bay. She opens the hatch and sees the pod, shining as though someone's polished the outside. 

There's a hologram that flickers to life when she starts checking the controls. It's a dark-haired man in an orange flight suit, presumably BB-8's master Poe Dameron. "Hi - Rey, is it? I hope you're seeing this. Thanks for sending BB-8 back to me, and for the information about the raiders. BB-8 says this pod is all you own so I really can't thank you enough for what you did - he was very excited to tell us about his adventure." 

In the background Rey hears BB-8 beeping his agreement. Poe Dameron grins at this. "I hope you don't mind that my mechanic made a few upgrades. You'll be able to get a couple more days out of a fuel cell now, and we boosted your comm array a little in case you ever need to use your distress signal."

He gives a jaunty wave. "Thanks again!"

The holo shimmers out. Rey smiles to herself, pleased. She checks the readout for the pod's power levels and finds it improved by several percent. Then she puts away the new fuel cells she'd purchased and slips into the pilot's seat. She's spent too long at Niima for her liking. 

The abandoned station doesn't look as though anyone's been here since she was. She puts on her suit, tethers the pod, and crosses over.

It proves to be a good way to clear her head of the turmoil and confusion of the last few days. She doesn't have to think to disassemble a nav console, or to spool wire and pull optical fibres. It's only when her sling bag is full does she realize how much time has passed. 

She checks her oxygen readouts for the suit and finds she has enough time to get through a few more files on the still-operating computer in the command area. This time she bypasses the personnel sections and opens the detainee files. There are more than she expected to find, and her memory flashes to the bottom level of the station; empty now, but the small cells clearly indicated what the area had been. 

The first few files are station crew members who'd been court-martialed for various offenses. Then there's a list with a side notation that says those detainees were political prisoners, escaped convicts re-captured elsewhere in the system, and those suspected of piracy awaiting sentencing. On that roster there are a few pictures. One is a dark-haired woman with a fierce gaze, as though she's about to leap at whatever security officer is taking the picture. 

Rey stares at it for a long time, feeling her heart beating in her throat. The woman looks like her. The nose and mouth are the same as hers. The freckles on the woman's face seem to mirror where Rey has memorized her own to be. 

_Did you find them?_ she hears Ben's voice say, and she reaches out without thinking. He's close by, on a ship outside the station, and Rey marvels for a second at being able to feel another person's existence like this. 

_Yes, I think so._ Then she touches her gloved hand gently to the computer screen, trying to commit her mother's face to memory. "I'll come back, and find out the rest, I promise," she whispers, before powering down the system and heading back to the place she'd come in from, where Ben's ship is waiting.

The craft outside is huge and seems to almost glitter in the starlight. She disconnects her pod from the station and and lets the ship pull them in. The whole time she can feel Ben's presence - solid, a simmering rage that's melting into something she might classify as resolve. A bay opens to accept the pod, and she sets it down in an open space, then goes to the hatch. Through the port she can see Ben, in his dark cloak. There's a calmness radiating from him now, but it feels almost artificial. _Ben?_

He touches his temple, then holds a finger to his lips in the common gesture for silence. Rey opens the pod. She steps out and directly into Ben's embrace. "What is this," she whispers in his ear. "Why do you feel - not like you."

"I've blocked him the best I can. Now I need your help. I'm going to get free." He wraps the cloak around her. The warmth of it is physically soothing but she's still confused. "Don't reach for me with your mind. He'll know."

She understands what _get free_ means. "You want to kill him," she murmurs. 

"It's _my_ fleet."

"Why do you need me?" she asks, even as it occurs to her that _she_ can't be the missing piece to this - what Ben needs must be the lightsaber she's brought. 

Ben stiffens as she feels that same cold from before push into his mind. "We have an appointment," he says, his voice now flat and devoid of emotion. "Follow my lead."

"What…" she starts, but lets the rest of the question drop. There's more here than Ben has let her know. 

"Later," he breathes in her ear, so soft it's barely a word, and lets go of her. She watches his face turn impassive. Then he turns, making a small gesture for Rey to follow him. There are only a few others in the landing bay; she notes a mixture of humanoids and non-humanoids, and they all seem to very studiously _not_ be paying them much attention. 

Ben pays them no attention at all as he and Rey go past. 

There's a long corridor. _As dark as I remember,_ Rey thinks to herself, realizing she's seen this ship before, in her dreams. Maybe those were Ben's dreams, or she was seeing what he saw when he was awake. Ben stays beside her as they walk, his cloak brushing her arm. He doesn't speak. Rey pushes down her urge to take his hand. His mind seems to grow more distant and she tries to do the same. Tries to take the few moments afforded them to lock away the things she doesn't want Snoke to see. 

The room they enter - _throne room,_ she thinks - is large and mostly empty save two masked guards, a long row of consoles, and a chair draped in black. On the chair sits the robe-wearing humanoid she's seen in Ben's mind, his leathery skin stretched oddly over his skull, puckered and scarred in places. He reminds her of the lizards that tried to find shade in the marketplace on Jakku.

"Young Rey," Snoke says, drawing out her name. She glances at Ben and finds him standing perfectly still. He doesn't meet her gaze. 

Snoke beckons her closer with crippled fingers. When Rey doesn't move, he makes a fist, and she finds herself being pulled closer to him even while fighting against it. _How_.

"What do you. Want with me," she manages to ask, around the pain that threatens to crush her ribs. 

Snoke opens his hand and she drops to the ground, landing on her knees, her palms slapping against the polished floor. He reaches out and the lightsaber flies from her belt into his grasp. "That's not yours," she growls, but he only chuckles darkly and turns the lightsaber in his hand for a moment before setting it on the wide arm of his chair. 

"My apprentice excels at striking terror into the hearts of those who would take me for weak," Snoke says, his voice a cold hiss that seems to curl around her throat. "But I can see it is not terror that he's struck into yours."

Rey shudders, recoiling hard at the intrusion into her thoughts. "Ben, please," she begs, but Ben remains silent. 

"His old name," Snoke says, and his clammy laugh is icy and slithering. "You would do better to remember who he is now, the feared pirate Kylo Ren."

 _Kylo Ren_. The name she heard on the scratchy transceiver at Niima. "Get out of my head," she says to Snoke, pushing against him as hard as she can. His flinch is minute, and he reclines more comfortably into his chair as though she'd done nothing at all. 

"Ren has a knack for convincing my new soldiers to join us, but what I truly need is someone who understands innately the systems of the ships joining the fleet," Snoke continues. "What things to dismantle, and what to keep. What would be… useful."

He pauses, and Rey feels him sifting through her thoughts once again, weighing and discarding. He lets out that same hissing laugh. "You thought it was fate that connected you? _I_ bridged the gap, to draw you in. To make you trust him."

Disgust rolls through her and she tries to lunge at him, only to be held completely in place "You're a monster!"

"And you liked it," he says, as though she hadn't said a word. "You were glad not to feel alone, after your parents left you on that station, left you to toil for that slug, day after day -"

There's a bright flash and Snoke makes a choking noise, collapsing forward. His presence in her mind is abruptly blanked out, and she reels for a moment before catching herself, and reaching up to catch the lightsaber as it flies toward her. Ben is now standing next to her, his own in hand. The two guards are advancing on them, their bladed weapons lighting up, crackling with energy along the edges. "It's yours," Ben says, nodding at her lightsaber. _And so am I._

Then the guards are upon them. Rey ducks and whirls, parries and thrusts, sees the guard Ben is fighting go sliding across the floor. _Rey, on me,_ she hears, and she turns, steps, and Ben boosts her up. Her blade slices cleanly through the chest of the advancing masked guard. The other guard circles them both, turning the axe-style weapon slowly and menacingly. 

Then the guard runs at her. 

_Go low,_ she tells Ben, and rolls over his back as he sweeps the blade of his lightsaber in a fast circle, cutting the guard off at the knees. As the guard falls, Rey thrusts her lightsaber into the featureless faceplate. What's left of the guard drops to the floor. 

The heat of the blades burned all the flesh they touched, and the air is thick with the smell. Rey tries not to gag. She's barely aware of Ben lifting his hand, and with a casual gesture, the body of the old, manipulative pirate is sliding away from them, into a corner, where it stops with the face turned towards the wall. The bodies of the guards follow seconds later.

"I have to leave," she gasps out, struggling against the sickness she feels. 

He turns toward her, expression pained. _Rey._

_Please, Ben._

He nods. Rey doesn't run for her pod, but it's close, and she feels like she can only breathe again once she's inside. The bay opens for her to depart. 

The stars all seem too bright. She flies aimlessly for more than an hour, wanting only distance between herself and the pirate ship. The glittering hulk of it is no more than a pinprick in her vision when she realizes she'd left the lightsaber behind, dropped onto the floor in her revulsion.

Shaking, she stares out into the darkness of space and sips methodically from one of her canteens until her mouth no longer tastes like ash.

Ben doesn't reach for her again. She's both glad for it, and frustrated by the way it feels like a part of her has been hollowed out. If Snoke had truly been the reason for their connection, she wouldn't have been able to hear Ben speak in her head once Snoke was dead. And she wouldn't be able to still feel his presence, a clear fixture in the back of her mind. 

Eventually, she realizes she's flown back to Shaba Station. The light she'd affixed earlier is still shining, illuminating a portion of blown-out hull. She sits in the pod for a while longer, looking at the station. 

Then she pulls on her suit. 

Once she's on board the station, she goes directly to the command center. The computer takes a while to power up. She's not even sure if there will be more than what she saw the last time, but she has to look. She navigates quickly to the list of prisoners, and the still image of her mother. She hadn't realized there was no name with it before, but it's linked to another file. When she opens it, there's a blurry picture that looks as though it was taken from security footage, the woman in a corridor. Beneath it, she sees a few lines of text.

_Name: -redacted-_  
_Status: Raider, captured._  
_Sentence: -redacted-, indefinite._  
_Additional note: Homeworld - unknown, Uncharted Region. Location of child - unknown. Location of child's father - KIA._

There's a date, one she recognizes as not long after she was left at the station with Unkar Plutt.

 _Raider._

"Snoke came after that, in the power vacuum that was left," Ben says, just as she feels he's there. It's almost a relief to feel him, and she lets out a breath so heavily that it fogs the faceplate of her suit for a moment. 

Rey turns from the screen to look at him. He's not in the room where he'd killed Snoke; instead, in a small room that Rey identifies easily as his private quarters. The expression on his face is hopeful, and he reaches out a hand. Rey wonders if they can touch, like this, or if her fingers will pass through his like a fog now that the thing responsible for connecting them in the first place is dead. 

"It took me a long time to find out what things were like before he took over the fleet," he continues. "There weren't many crew members left from that time, and the ones who were left were reluctant to tell me anything, even with encouragement."

She holds out her own gloved hand and feels his touch just as strongly as if he were there. "But why did you lie to me?"

"I didn't," he says, shaking his head. Rey pushes with her mind, as strong as she can, and feels nothing but truth from him. "I needed your help to kill him, yes. I _wanted_ your help to get the lightsaber, so that we could meet. But I never said I wasn't a raider. And everything you saw in me was the truth. I didn't pretend any of how I felt."

"It wasn't something you could fake," she answers, slowly, as the thought dawns on her.

"I'm sure Snoke would have preferred I fake it." Ben squeezes her hand and steps closer. His other arm slides around her waist, and even through her suit, Rey can feel the warmth of him.

"I know you needed to be alone," he says. "But I hope you'll join me. The ship will let you in, whenever you want to come."

Then he disappears. Rey feels the echo of his touch linger for a moment longer.

*

She knows instinctively where to fly the pod, and just as Ben said, the bay of the dark ship opens to accept her. There are more ships around it now, smaller - definite cargo carriers and transports. There are TIE fighters now in the bay, clearly new arrivals in the last few days. Two astromech droids roll past her as she steps out of the pod, both of them blue and chrome.

Ben is standing in the corridor outside the hangar. His cloak now has a single red edge, running from his throat to the floor. 

"There were explosives left on Shaba Station," Rey says. "I detonated them."

The explosions had been soundless and beautiful. Ben looks at her with approval clear on his face. 

"You can be whoever you want with me," he offers. "You can leave the scavenging life behind. No more Unkar Plutt. We have more than enough in this fleet. And you know now what happened to your parents; you don't have to search for that any longer."

Finally knowing where she came from - _raiders, here_ , she came from _here_ \- is like having a load she didn't know she was carrying all these years lifted suddenly from her back. And in front of her is someone who _wants_ her company, her companionship, after a lifetime of indifference from the other depot traders. 

"You can leave again at any time, if that's what you truly want," Ben says as they step into the throne room. "But I would like it if you stayed."

He's been lonely, too - Rey can feel it, a thing in him that seems to ease in her presence. He lifts a hand towards the chair Snoke had died in, now clean, and draped with a deep red fabric. The whole room seems to look different now. "You can sit here," Ben says softly.

Rey looks at the chair for a moment. Then she steps up the riser. The red fabric is a cloak, heavy and embroidered in grey, lined with a darker red material. "For you," Ben murmurs. She swings the cloak around her shoulders and settles into the seat. 

Ben sinks to his knees next to her, and she feels that same thrill as when they'd stolen the lightsaber. "Ben -"

"Stay with me," he whispers, and rests his forehead on her thigh. Rey slides her hand through his hair, strokes the back of his neck. He shivers under her palm and she feels the electricity jump under her skin. Ben must feel it too, because he sighs her name.

Rey pulls him up slightly and leans down at the same time, bringing their mouths together. The open space of the room feels like it's spinning around them. "Rey," Ben gasps again, moving so he's leaning between her knees as they kiss. She keeps a hand in his hair; it's soft between her fingers. 

"I don't like this room," she says, between passes of her mouth over Ben's. "Let's make it something else."

"Yes," he agrees, no hesitation. "You don't need a throne for people to see the power in you."

That makes her shiver. Ben presses a kiss to her throat, whispers, "I can feel it, like a current running through you."

She slides her hands over his shoulders, under the cloak, feeling the muscle beneath her fingertips. When she presses, Ben leans against her even closer, his eyes closing. Rey smiles at that, but she can't be in this room any longer. _Where are your quarters?_

_I'll show you._

It's not a large space, but it's bigger than the bay at Niima. There's a tall cabinet with a door, a footlocker, and a bed with dark coverings. Rey waves her hand, testing, and the cabinet slides open, revealing several sets of matching clothing. Ben merely smiles at this and says, "I don't own anything worth hiding from you."

He drops his cloak on the footlocker and sets his lightsaber on top of it. Then he sits down on the edge of the bed and looks at her. The heat in his gaze matches the pounding in her veins. Rey steps closer, slides her hand over his jaw. "I need some time, to figure out for myself," _this thing between us_ , she doesn't say out loud, stroking her thumb across Ben's mouth. _I'm used to being alone._

He nods. 

_And there's still one place I have to see._

"Yes. We'll go."

*

The wind whips at Rey's cloak, at her braid, pulls loose the hair around her face. It's cool and damp from the water in front of them, a huge expanse of grey and a sort of blue, mixing, white foam here and there where the waves crash into the rocks. The landscape is jagged in places and gently flat and green in others, seen easier from the shuttle they'd brought down to the surface than by the naked eye.

To the west stretched a rolling plain of grassland, dotted with structures that might have been buildings once. This is the planet her parents left more than twenty years ago. They were too young to understand that the responsibility they were fleeing was better than execution. After that, the records she'd found had stopped abruptly. And so, it seemed, had the monarchy on this planet.

"There are almost no records for most of the planets in the Uncharted Region," Ben said, when Rey had returned to their quarters fighting back tears, a storm rolling through her. "And _you_ still exist."

She curls a hand around the bracelet of kyber, now worn on the outside of her sleeve for everyone in the fleet to see. 

"I dreamed about this place," she says, even though she knows Ben's seen it. "From right here. It seemed so real I could almost taste the air. And I'd wake up in that grungy flight bay, so disappointed."

"Not anymore," Ben replies. 

Above them in orbit around the planet is the pirate fleet, now several cruisers strong, with dozens of smaller ships, and the sleek dark flagship. They'd captured a transport last. The crew hadn't even picked up weapons against them, only asked Kylo Ren what their new duties were to be. Half the cargo was taken to Pointmoon, where no one cares if what's being sold is stolen, and a handful of the crew stayed behind there, taking over a merchant's stall and a repairs bay. The rest joined the fleet.

A sharp wind blows, and Rey moves closer to Ben. "The foundry on Chalcedon is next?"

"Yes. That will give us control of nearly half the durasteel production in that region."

Which will allow them to gradually assume control of the shipping lanes, and use part of the fleet for trade. The logistics of it are bigger than anything Rey has thought about before in her life. She leaves most of that to Ben, and gets her own hands dirty in the innards of the older ships they obtain, restoring them to a quicker life. 

"Should we look through the ruins?" Ben asks, nodding in the direction of the crumbling buildings.

Rey shakes her head, certain. "I needed to see it, to stand here, but I know all I need to know. This planet was never my home."

She looks at the grey ocean a moment longer, then slides her fingers through Ben's and walks toward the shuttle that will take them back up to the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy fandom5k, boudour!
> 
> I have not written this pairing before, or read /any/ of the fic (which is sometimes a good thing when you're writing!), but to be honest - the part in TLJ where Rey reaches back to hold on to Kylo Ren so he can boost her to kick one of the Praetorian guards might be my favorite two seconds in the entire movie. I knew I'd never write this pairing if I wasn't prompted to, and boudour, all your prompts were great and made me very happy that I'd offered this. I tried to mix and match several things for you - I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Thanks to: all the SW media I used for research, b. for all her notes/suggestions/questions and for letting me email various bits out of context, and my twitter TL for not telling me to shut up every time I yelled about my wordcount without telling them what I was working on.


End file.
